Thursday, January 7, 2010

Nothing like a whacked-out back to make you turn to things you otherwise wouldn’t. Was it the 40 lb bags of Kirkland dog food? Over-zealous vacuuming? (Forgot to do that, too—for two weeks.) Or spending too much time cross-legged in my desk chair? Probably a combination. It’s depressing but a little nice to enjoy painkillers while wallowing in bed surrounded by coffee, the newspaper, books, the phone, pens, half-finished meals, and the cat.

Breaking Out of Bedlam will be on bookshelves next week. Advance copies, three boxes of them, are sitting in my living room. I have four readings, two workshops, and two radio interviews lined up in the next month. I had an anxiety dream that I had to lecture on cotton while crouching on all fours, and another that the 747 that was supposed to fly me to my reading decided to take the freeway instead of the sky.

It’s time to dream about movie deals, glowing NYT reviews, and of course Oprah. (Every writer dreams about Oprah, even the ones who deny it. Especially the ones who deny it.) Dollars signs in the eyeballs. Fantasies of home improvements, enhanced wardrobe, lavish vacations. Really, though, I’ll be happy if there are a minimum of five people at each reading, my Amazon numbers stay out of the seven figures, and no one rips me a new one in print. It's asking a lot, but it doesn't hurt to hope.